A/N: So sorry for the delay in releasing this chapter. I've been spending a lot of time working on a collaboration with okama-kenpo that we are hoping to start rolling out in the near future—a One Piece college AU! If you like epically long fanfic, maybe you'll want to check it out? Follow our joint FF account, dickyang, to be sure you don't miss the first chapter!
And thanks so much for reading this story—your feedback has meant so much to me! Only two more chapters to go after this one...
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sanji's living room
Present time
As Sanji's mind drifted through the memories, Zoro continued to stand directly in front of him, arms around him in a loose embrace.
"I'll tell you what happened back then."
The swordsman's voice, hushed and tinged with a hint of sadness, wrenched Sanji out of his reminiscence.
The chef pulled back sharply, staring at Zoro, wide-eyed and utterly dumbstruck. The swordsman's fingers gripping the back of Sanji's neck loosened incrementally.
How the hell can you do that now?
His eyes narrowing, Sanji studied his expression, which was as calm and impassive as his voice.
"What do you mean, you'll tell me?" he sputtered. His mind reeled as he tried to grasp whether this man speaking to him was really the man he used to know—the shitty, difficult man he recalled.
All those years ago, when Zoro had nearly left Sanji in that hotel room, the swordsman had been so entrenched in darkness, Sanji had feared for a brief moment that the real man had slipped away. He concealed his inner demons, hiding them far away from the rest of the world.
And Zoro—the Zoro he had once known, anyway—did not merely decline to talk about important things back then.
He had been utterly incapable of it.
But this man... He had said he would speak about it without even a glimmer of hesitation. The lines in Sanji's forehead grew incrementally deeper.
"What the hell else would I mean by that?" Zoro asked, the faintest hint of irritation crossing his face as the hand at the back of Sanji's neck slipped downward, finding its final resting place along his spine.
"It's just..." Sanji started, but the words didn't come to him. His mind was reeling over the fact that the other man had brought it up to begin with. "Nothing. Tell me."
Zoro's expression turned sullen and he gnawed on his lip for a moment. His unexpectedly somber tone nearly made the breath hitch in Sanji's throat; he had not expected the inflection of his voice to be so plainly tinged with regret.
He pulled away, listlessly turning around and returning to his seat on the sofa. Sanji wordlessly followed, sitting next to him.
When Zoro finally started to speak, Sanji found himself entranced by the movement of his lips.
"When I was at that village—you know, the one we'd just been at, before we got to the island with that hotel. I'm not sure if you remember it all, but that group of pirates had kidnapped a bunch of young kids."
Sanji nodded grimly. "Ah, I remember it." He barely held back the words "all too well," that threatened to form at the tip of his tongue.
"When we were all there, you remember how I got separated from everyone?"
"Yeah." He had gotten lost, not separated—but it seemed like such a tiring point to bring up now.
"I found some of the guys in that crew, and they tricked me into thinking I was fighting—you know—the top brass. That it was just them between me and the kids in the next room. That's what they made it sound like."
Zoro closed his eye a moment, drawing in a deep breath. The corner of his lip twitched. "So, I fought them. Tch, what the hell else would I have done back then?"
For some reason, Sanji flinched—he didn't really understand why, but it almost seemed like an acknowledgment of his youthful shortcoming. An acknowledgment of fault that was something beyond weakness. So unlike Zoro.
"Deep down in my gut, something felt wrong," Zoro continued. "I shouldn't have ignored that feeling, but I did. And those guys were so damn weak—they mostly just messed with me, screaming stupid insults, worthless threats. When we actually got down to fighting, it was over before it got started."
Zoro gritted his teeth, clenching his hand into a fist.
"After I got the last guy, I heard a kid scream. It took me awhile to find the room it came from. When I did, I found out there were a lot more of those damned pirates, and they were all with the kids... What was left of the kids, anyway." Zoro's voice became more gravelly as he pronounced the last sentence. "One guy in particular was really... he was a nasty bastard. I'm pretty sure he was the one who did it."
Zoro's gaze shifted to Sanji, a shadow of agony in his eye.
"You probably didn't see what it looked like... underneath everything," he continued, "but it was fucking awful."
Underneath everything... Sanji repeated the words in his mind. The meaning behind the phrase came to him almost immediately.
Underneath the other corpses.
Sanji had briefly looked into the room and he had seen the carnage in there, but he had assumed the bodies belonged to the men that Zoro had taken out. He hadn't looked at any of it that carefully.
The cook closed his eyes; how did he never know about that? At the time, he—and the rest of the crew—had been told that the children who were taken hostage didn't make it. It was a grim detail to learn, and it had left a dour note amongst them for days.
But somehow, the detail about where the children were found had never trickled down to the rest of the crew. Sanji had never known Zoro found those children—or that they had been killed so gruesomely.
"I've seen a lot of death, but even I don't want to see a bunch of dead kids like that," Zoro rumbled, bowing his head.
A long pause followed before Zoro continued. "It was my fault, for getting stuck fighting those other guys—for not just ignoring them, and trying to figure out what room those children were in, when that's what my instinct was telling me to do. Instead I'd listened to the taunts of those weak assholes. Even if I was just a kid back then, I should've known better."
Sanji shifted uncomfortably, first staring at the other man incredulously before he finally had to avert his gaze.
How was the swordsman able to speak of something like this so plainly now? It was utterly incomprehensible. Wracking his brain, he couldn't recall a single time when Zoro had so straightforwardly described a situation that caused him this kind of anguish. Zoro was only straightforward when it came to two things, and this didn't compute into the equation.
"I don't understand how you're able to do this," Sanji murmured.
"To do what?"
"To tell me all this."
"I had to," Zoro replied solemnly. He reached out a hand toward Sanji's face, brushing strands of white-and-blonde hair back, his calloused fingertips faintly tracing the outline of a faded scar.
"You had to," he repeated numbly.
"Yeah, I had to. Because it's the only way to move past it."
Sanji hunched forward, covering his face with his hand, as through holding his head could stop it from spinning.
There's no way this marimo could have his shit together more than me. Right?
The notion made him beside himself with anger—but as the rage within him started to bubble over, it deflated just as suddenly as it came on, as he came to a realization.
When was the last time he had felt so angry? Or sad, or overwrought by emotion?
When had he felt anything but minor annoyance, boredom, or apathy?
He couldn't even remember what it felt like to feel anything. He was furious that Zoro just may be the person to remind him. All of these feelings he had cast aside, coming back to him in a torrent, left him feeling raw and worn out.
He wanted to resist it because it was too difficult. And yet, he was starting to remember... to every bad feeling, there was a corresponding pleasant feeling. It was something he hadn't allowed himself to have in awhile.
"So, talk," Zoro said simply. Sanji closed his eyes, feeling the other man's stare on him, his chest feeling heavy as he contemplated the weighty words.
"You're a real fucking bastard."
"I don't know if that really counts," Zoro commented, smiling faintly. "I mean, that one's never been hard for you to say."
"Nothing makes sense anymore," Sanji replied, leaning his head back and covering his eyes with the crook of his elbow.
He didn't know how he felt about it. About any of it.
Sanji's patio
A couple of days later
Zoro's insistence to convey how he felt did not come up again. Instead, they continued on with the strange routine that they had a fallen into that was somehow warm and fulfilling and left him feeling a terror that reminded him of dangling off the edge of cliff.
The temperature was mild, the sky was clear, and a pleasant wind drifted over Sanji as he leaned back in the chair on his patio. An unusual feeling of contentment washed over the chef. He closed his eyes, taking in a deep breath, noticing the pleasant scent of the ocean being carried by the temperate breeze.
When Zoro broke the silence, Sanji likened it to the sound of breaking glass.
"There are some things I need to ask you." Zoro spoke suddenly, a trace of agitation behind his words as he sat up a little straighter in his chair.
"What is this about?" he asked, immediately on edge.
For a split second, the cook thought that maybe it was about him. About what was going on with him, and all of the messed up feelings he had been trying to keep under wraps.
But as he looked at Zoro's gruesome expression, he knew there was no way that was the case. This was about something far, far bigger than just himself.
The weight of that realization made Sanji feel like he might throw up.
Please, don't, shitty marimo.
"About Luffy," Zoro said, as he jammed a cigar between his teeth, averting his gaze.
Sanji's heart sank. He reached up and loosened his tie, suddenly finding it difficult to breathe.
"I don't want to—" he started to say.
"I know you don't, and I haven't asked you about it all this time because of it," Zoro said grimly. "But I need to know what happened."
I know, Sanji thought with difficulty. They were your nakama, too, after all.
"Awhile ago... you said to me that some people don't get to realize their dreams."
"Hah, when did I say that exactly?" Sanji muttered, folding his hands across his lap, trying to keep them steady.
"One of the first few times I was here."
"When Isshin was here?" Sanji asked, a bit disdainfully—he didn't mean for it to come out that way, but it did.
Zoro nodded his head. "Ah, probably. But that doesn't matter. What I want to know is—was that comment about Luffy?"
Sanji swallowed with difficulty, his mouth suddenly feeling too dry to speak. He took a long swallow of his sake—it barely helped.
"Well?" he asked, a bit impatiently, as he turned to look at Sanji. "Did Luffy find it?"
Sanji wiped away a bead of sweat forming on his brow.
"You already know Luffy never became king of the pirates," the chef said slowly, cautiously choosing his words. "Whatever the hell kind of meaningless title that would have been, anyway."
Zoro frowned. "That means he didn't, then."
"I didn't say that," Sanji said, scrunching up his face with difficulty. "It's just, that thing called 'one piece' didn't make him anything like a king. It made him a fucking martyr."
"A martyr?" Zoro repeated the word slowly, carefully, his expression darkening.
"Yeah. Uh, someone who sacrificed himself for a cause."
"I know what the word means," Zoro snapped. "It's just... the only thing the papers said was that he died in a fight against the world's leaders."
"Tch, that's all they told the public," Sanji replied bitterly, as he gnawed on his bottom lip.
"Tell me the rest," Zoro said firmly, covering his face with his hand.
"There isn't much to say, though," the cook went on, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to relieve some of the pressure of his throbbing head. "What Luffy found was information... A truth, I guess. And that truth lead us right to the corrupt core of that shitty government. So that's why we were there—and the rest is the shit you read about."
Zoro nodded solemnly, his expression strained. "I see," was all he managed to say.
"That battle—Luffy's last battle—was the last nail in the coffin for the old structure of the government. The world was turned inside out for a few years, but I guess we're all better off for it. Even if it's awfully different for old-timers like us nowadays."
"That's also when Robin...?" the swordsman started to ask, but he let the question trail off.
The cook closed his eyes; it was enough for him to know exactly what he was asking. "Ah, that's right. From injuries she got at that time. She managed to escape with us but—but she didn't make it. But that detail never made its way to the papers, probably." He heaved a sigh, glancing over at him. "How did you know, though?"
Zoro averted his gaze, appearing to be suddenly at a loss for words. Sanji stared at him, his eyes narrowing. "Something you don't want to tell me?"
The swordsman frowned, holding a nervous fist up to his lips. "I know because—I looked for most of the crew, at some point or another. Just to lay eyes on them again."
The words felt like a punch aimed straight at Sanji's throat.
"You what?" he barked. "When the hell did you do that?"
He shrugged, hugging his arm around himself, his fingertips unconsciously fingering the stump of his arm. "I was roaming for a long time, trying to become stronger. I tried to figure out where everyone was—so when I was near one of them, I could see them."
"J-just hold on one damned minute," Sanji stammered, sitting upright, practically shouting. His balled his shaking hands into fists. "Are you telling me they all know you're alive?"
The cook felt like his heart could have crumbled into a thousand pieces. He had not kept in touch with any of them—but still, for them not to contact him, to tell him about the swordsman. A feeling of hysteria started to grow within him. "They knew, and they didn't—and you didn't tell me—"
"Calm down," Zoro flew to his feet, quickly closing the small distance between them, kneeling in front of Sanji. "They didn't know—they had no idea it was me."
Sanji exhaled slowly, hugging his shaking arms around him. "I see," he barely managed to say in response.
Zoro leaned forward, pressing his forehead against Sanji's, placing a strong hand behind his head. "You dumbass," the swordsman said softly. "I'm serious, calm down."
"The hell, I am calm," Sanji lied, an unmistakeable quaver in his voice.
"Yeah, sure," Zoro scoffed. "Just listen to me for a minute, alright?"
Sanji nodded, and the other man released his grip on the back of his head.
"I've been no one but 'Isshin' for a long time—barely anyone saw my face, and I sure as hell didn't reveal my name to anyone," the swordsman reassured him. "Hell, this place is the first place I've really went anywhere without a mask in a long time."
"I see..." But then a different, far more urgent thought crossed his mind. With a shaking hand, he reached out and clutched Zoro's shoulder, bracing himself for an answer he was terrified to hear. "You and I... Have we... Have you met me before?"
"Hah?"
"I don't remember meeting Isshin," Sanji started, "but I may not have, if it was before you started making a name for yourself. Did we meet?"
Zoro backed away, eyes downcast as he rose to his feet, returning to his seat. "No. When we ran into each other at that festival... it was the first time."
Sanji nodded, not even sure if he was relieved or not. "This is going to sound really fucking petty, but if you already saw the rest of the crew, why the hell was I last?"
The swordsman continued to stare down at the ground, the lines on his face suddenly looking deeper than they ever had before, as though he had somehow aged during the course of the conversation.
"Well? You can fucking talk about yourself now, can't you? So tell me," Sanji repeated, a bit more forcefully than he intended.
"I didn't know," Zoro said finally, his voice thick.
"Hah? You didn't know what?"
"There were a lot of things I didn't know," he murmured, placing his hand over his mouth for a moment. "I was afraid that you, of all people, might actually notice it was me."
Sanji glared at him. "Why would I? I thought you were dead, and I sure as hell don't believe in ghosts."
"If you did notice, though, I didn't know if it'd affect your life. I still had something I needed to do—and you had finally reached the place you were aiming for," Zoro said, clenching his eye shut. "But worse than that... even if I came as Isshin, and you had no idea who I was, I wasn't sure if I'd be able to just leave."
Sanji stared at him, slightly slack-jawed, utterly at a loss for words.
Zoro opened his eye and stared at him again. "And that last fear was pretty goddamn real."
"What are you telling me, marimo?" Sanji's eyes narrowed.
"I'm telling you I was originally just going to try to see you, and then leave," Zoro replied though gritted teeth.
Sanji jumped to his feet, instantly overcome by an inexplicable rage. "Is that so?" he asked loudly, his voice steadily rising into a crescendo. "You were going to check in on me and, what? Fucking disappear another twenty years? Is that it?"
"I don't know," Zoro replied with a sigh. "But like I said—I had a pretty damned good reason to be worried."
"Why the hell is that?"
Suddenly Zoro had risen to his feet as well, and Sanji felt lips press against his. They were warm and desperate and maybe, just faintly, trembling.
Sanji's anger didn't disappear—but he did feel it sort of slip into the background as he got caught up in Zoro's surprisingly sweet mouth. The swordsman's strong arm wrapped around his back, clinging to him, urgently pressing him closer.
The kiss was brimming with a frightening emotion that Sanji was certain he had never felt from the other man in their youthful days, yet which still felt painfully nostalgic. The swordsman had never seemed passionate about anything but fighting, and yet, when his mouth conveyed such a startlingly unspeakable message, the blonde couldn't help but wonder if maybe he was passionate about him, too.
Lips still locked, Sanji felt like his body nearly melted into Zoro's as they desperately clung to each other.
Even when their lips parted, neither man could bring himself to let go. They stood there in silence for a moment, continuing to hold onto each other, heads resting on each other's shoulders. Zoro finished his explanation with his voice barely a whisper, his lips nearly touching the cook's earlobe as he spoke.
"I fucking tried to leave, but I kept coming back."
Sanji tried to scoff, but it almost came out sounding like a sob, although he was sure he wasn't about to cry, even if his throat was a little strained.
"At that festival—I never meant to do more than get a glimpse of you. I sure as hell didn't mean to talk to you there. But then you forced that damned food on me, and I just couldn't..." he trailed off.
"There's no way that's true," Sanji said with agitation, abruptly shoving the swordsman away. He shifted on his feet uncomfortably, the muscles in his back and shoulders feeling inordinately tense.
"It's not like I can do anything to prove it, but it's the truth," Zoro shrugged, averting his gaze to the floor. "Even after those first couple of times, I didn't plan on telling you who I was."
"So why the hell did you?" Sanji asked sharply.
"You seemed like such a miserable prick. Maybe I felt a little bad for you at first." Zoro took a step back, letting his hand fall to his side. "Or, I don't know. Maybe I just wanted to know what happened. And then you said something that made think—it made me realize part of it might've been because of me."
Sanji stared at him numbly. Even though he watched the other man's lips move and they seemed to be syncing up with everything he had heard, it just did not make sense—there was no plausible way Zoro would say these things to him. Or talk about something so difficult.
Maybe this present-time Zoro was too far removed from the bull-headed man he knew in his past. His thought processes were so foreign and incomprehensible, it was as though the other man had spent the last twenty wretched, empty years learning about himself instead of wallowing in the despair of the world.
It left Sanji feeling irritated and pissed off.
"Tch, well, I know you're alive now, so you can go do whatever you were going to do, I guess," Sanji muttered peevishly, back into the chair, letting himself ungracefully fall into the seat. He roughly grabbed the glass next to him, taking a long gulp of his drink until it was gone.
"That so," Zoro murmured back, sitting down as well.
"Yeah, go fight a bunch of stupid swordsmen and wear your stupid feather-hat, I don't care."
"Hah, is that what you picture me doing?"
"Well, isn't that what you're going to do?"
"I don't know," Zoro said carefully. The lines etched into his face creased deeper and deeper as he stared down at the ground. "It depends."
"Depends on what?" Sanji asked hesitantly, wiping a drop of sweat trickling down from the edge of his hairline. He felt like it was a little challenging to breathe, all of the sudden. May he just needed some water. Wrapping faintly trembling fingers around his empty glass, he rose to his feet again.
Just as Sanji rested his hand on the door, preparing to slide it open, Zoro's voice made him pause.
"It depends on you," he rumbled softly, his deep baritone voice barely audible.
Sanji's grip tightened on the door handle. "On me?"
"Yeah," Zoro said, standing up and snatching his glass. "I'll follow you in, I'm empty as well."
Sanji walked inside and made his way to the kitchen, feeling Zoro right behind him. He took in shallow breaths, waiting for the other man to speak.
Stopped at the kitchen counter, he reached out for the bottle of sake they had been sharing that evening. Zoro stood next to him, so close, he could feel the heat of his body.
Fingers resting on the bottle's label, he turned toward the other man and stared at him, his lips tightly pressed together.
"What?" Zoro asked, frowning.
"Aren't you going to finish what you were saying?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"What are you waiting for, then?" Sanji asked, his grip around the bottle tightening incrementally as several seconds of silence slipped by. But instead of the explanation the cook was expecting, Zoro asked only one question.
"Should I leave?" The words were appallingly simple compared to the spectrum of emotions behind his voice.
"I'm not going to tell you what to do." His chest felt tight; he tried to ignore it as he raised the bottle and refilled their glasses with a heavy pour.
Zoro reached out and grabbed his arm as he set the sake bottle down.
"Would things be better if I left?"
Sanji gritted his teeth. "What kind of question is that, marimo?"
"It's pretty straightforward. If you want me to leave, tell me, and I'll get out of your life." The fingertips on Sanji's arm squeezed slightly and the cook felt a twinge in his chest.
"I'm not saying I don't understand the question," Sanji grumbled, glaring furiously at the counter top, strands of white hair falling in front of his eyes, enshrouding them in shadows. "I'm saying, what the hell kind of question is that."
"You're angry." Releasing his grip on the cook's arm, Zoro turned around and leaned back against kitchen cabinets, folding his arm in front of him. "I just asked you a question. Tell me why you're mad."
"You already know why," Sanji growled.
"Maybe I don't. That's why I want to hear it from you."
He could feel his frustration steadily rising, in a swell of anger. He forced himself to suck in several deep, agitated breaths. "I don't want to say these stupid fucking things..."
"It doesn't matter if they're stupid," Zoro said, his tone obnoxiously level-headed. "Say what you're thinking."
"Not this shitty conversation again."
"Yeah, this isn't like how I used to be," Zoro sighed, apprehensively running his fingers through his graying hair. "That's fine if you're pissed at me, but I want to—I just want to hear what's on your damn mind."
"There's a reason I don't say what I'm thinking," Sanji spat back, the irritation within him mounting.
"Make an exception," Zoro said, a hint of demand in his tone.
Sanji's fists clenched, his anger rising to a peak it hadn't touched in an eternity. Even in his furor, he remembered that he used to feel this way at least once each and every day when he and the swordsman were together—and it made him even more furious, until finally, words poured out of his mouth.
"I don't want to because if I do, I'm going to say things I don't want you to know. Like how much you affected my life."
The chef barely recognized the comments flying out of his mouth as being spoken in his voice.
"I don't want to tell you that us screwing around, or fighting, or maybe even having a goddamn moment where I felt like I was closer to you than I'd ever been to anyone else in my fucking life had any impact on me."
As Sanji gained momentum, the impossible words seemed to tumble out with increasing ease.
"That thinking you were dead would affect me any more than anyone else in our crew dying. But you're the one who said you noticed it, so fine."
Painful words spewed forth, but Zoro only watched him in silence, his face void of expression, except for maybe a haggard look in his eyes.
"Your death affected me worse than any other event in my goddamn life," he continued, his voice starting to tremble. "I can't even describe how much that fucking means, but just trust me that it means a lot. The shit I realized about myself after you were gone... After it was too late to do anything about it."
Sanji clutched the edge of the counter, his knuckles turning white. He sucked in a ragged breath, squeezing his eyes closed.
"I don't know if I felt happy a single damn day in my life since then. For the longest time, I couldn't even remember what it felt like to be anything but numb or bitter. Then you came back, and I felt something that wasn't... empty."
The cook was breathing heavily now, but he didn't care. He looked up at Zoro, noticing his sorrowful frown illuminated by the kitchen lights.
It pisses me off so much that you're the only one who affects me like this, even when I'm just a shitty old man.
A hotel room
Over twenty years ago
Sanji woke up on his stomach, his face mashed into the pillow. But rather than his severely craned neck, the first thing he noticed was his painfully dry mouth and pounding head. Pounding everything, actually.
He tried to push himself up by his elbows, but the action was a bit too much for his aching body. Had he gotten into a fight, or had something else caused the damage? He tried to piece together the fragments of what had happened the night before. He didn't remember large sections of it.
But he could faintly recall the sensation of heated skin, slick from sweat; the moans of a low, guttural voice; and his own voice screaming loudly at the intensity of an orgasm that made him feel a little euphoric just in remembrance of it. Even when his body throbbed so much.
Can hangovers make your whole body hurt? he wondered. Finally, he was able to pull himself up enough to twist his body and sit upright in the bed. But it was pretty bright outside, so maybe opening his eyes could wait a few more minutes.
The sound of boots on hardwood approached him. He had known Zoro was somewhere in the—hotel room? Yeah, it had to be—but he wished he could have been barefoot. The sound was a little deafening as it echoed inside of his throbbing head.
Zoro stopped just next to him. After a long pause, he muttered, "Take it, idiot."
Sanji opened his eyes with difficulty. He realized the swordsman was holding a glass of water.
Greedily, he snatched it from him, gulping its contents down in one long chug. It wasn't nearly enough, but at the very least, his tongue no longer felt like a disgusting lump of cotton in his mouth.
"Shit, is it late?" Sanji asked hoarsely. His voice surprised him, but it really shouldn't have—he sounded exactly like a man who had drank and shouted too much the night before.
"We should get back soon, probably," Zoro replied.
"How did we wind up here?" he asked, finally turning toward Zoro. He was a little surprised to see that the green-haired man had a fat lip.
"Figures you don't remember."
"Of course I don't remember, idiot. I was hammered," Sanji replied sharply, wincing from the sound of raising his own voice.
"I just mean, even I have a few hazy spots."
"That's rare." Sanji raised an eyebrow. The light was still a little too bright, but the act of opening his eyes seemed possible now, at least. "Does that mean you don't remember either?"
"No, I remember." He reached out and touched Sanji's left cheek. "You remember this?"
The blonde man was about to chastise him for the seemingly affectionate gesture, but as soon as the rough fingers met his skin, he blanched, instinctively pulling himself away.
"What the hell?" Sanji asked, raising his hand to his cheek and feeling a large, presumably bruised knot on his left cheekbone. But suddenly, he remembered Zoro's elbow flying towards his face.
"Your face," Zoro smirked, crossing his arms. "Remember now?"
"Yeah, why the hell did you—" he started to ask, glaring up at him—but his gaze met Zoro's fat lip again. "Oh, that was me, huh."
"Yeah, it was," the swordsman nodded. "But while we were in that bar, you tried to, uh... Well, I hit you to cover up for it."
"Shit," Sanji murmured.
He hated to be grateful for the shitty swordsman.
Sanji's kitchen
Present time
Even with Zoro standing right next to him, he hated remembering him. Hated remembering all of the things he used to feel when he was with him.
"Talking about this is pissing me off," Sanji scowled, massaging his temple tiredly as he leaned over the counter top. "I don't understand why you care so much about this, anyway. It's like you disappeared for twenty fucking years, and then you came back a different person."
"Am I that different?"
His voice and expression lacked any emotion, but Sanji felt the hint of insecurity behind it—it was a little startling, actually.
"Back then, you would've been trying to slice me in half instead of going through all this," Sanji said.
"We can fight if you want to," Zoro replied gravely, lowering his hand until his fingers just barely grazed the hilt of one of his katana. "But I don't think either of us actually wants to do that."
Sanji shook his head from side to side slowly. "Yeah," he murmured in agreement. "You're right."
"That means you've changed, too, Sanji," Zoro said quietly, folding his arm in front of him.
"Yeah, isn't that the whole point of this stupid conversation."
"Not really."
"Why the hell are you like this now, anyway," Sanji muttered, glancing at the other man expectantly.
Zoro gnawed on the corner of his lip. "Tch, I tell you what."
"What?"
"Tell me a little bit more about what's going on with you. And then, I'll tell you all about it."
"What am I, a kid?"
"You're sure as hell acting like one."
"That's a hell of a thing for a shitty marimo to say."
"Dumbass cook."
Sanji turned around, slumping his body against the counter. "For some reason, that sounds more natural than when you call me by my name," he sighed, closing his eyes. "I don't really know where to start, Zoro."
Sanji couldn't tell him how he fell into his downward spiral—even he didn't quite understand it. All the cook knew was that he had felt numb to everything around him for a long, long time. It was only being with Zoro, more recently, than had started to invoke all of these abandoned emotions.
Sanji wasn't sure when or why it had started... But as he contemplated it, he realized it had definitely begun sometime before the Mugiwara Pirates disbanded. And most assuredly, sometime after Zoro was thought to be dead...
He could remember some of the instances. And so, he told Zoro about them—because when it came to trying to describe what had happened to him, he had no idea where to begin. But these memories; he could articulate them, at the very least.
Although he spoke in no particular order, he somehow did find himself arriving at the event that probably defined the rest of his future, and led him to the place he was now.